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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Pasture-Raised Eggs

Why 'Pasture-Raised' Eggs?

Here at The Shire Farm, we love our eggs. Scrambled, fried, hard-boiled, baked, shaked, in frittata, or whipped into cupcakes, you name it. We usually try to have 2 eggs and 2 slices of toast every morning if we can. Eggs are one of the highest quality protein of any food. They're an affordable, dense source of nutrition that can be prepared in a variety of tasty ways. What's not to like? Until our chickens start laying, sooner rather than later hopefully, we've been getting our eggs from the store and from couple that raises backyard chickens in Lowell, MI, and you can tell the difference! While we wait for ours to start laying with eager anticipation, we thought we could explain why we chose to raise our chickens on pasture.

First, there's the difference of Quality:

Our Pasture-Raised Eggs

Pasture Raised Eggs produce eggs with firmer yolks, with a stronger color and a richer flavor. When cooking you see that shells are stronger from a diet higher in calcium, they break more cleanly with fewer shards of shell floating in your breakfast. The yolks are stronger and firmer, so if you're a fan of over-easy eggs like us, you'll enjoy fewer broken yolks. Deep orange, the yolk stands up tall within the thick whites and their color, flavor and texture are distinct as each hens diet. You can see the difference visually between Cage-Free eggs based on their diets:

Our chickens eat a mix of grain and grass

There's the difference of Health:

Not only are you getting better quality eggs, you are also getting healthier and more nutritious eggs.

Mother Earth News conducted an egg testing project and study in 2007, and found that eggs produced by truly free-ranging hens were far superior to those produced by battery cage hens on conventional factory egg farms. -1/3 less Cholesterol -1/4 less Saturated Fat -7 times more Beta Carotene-2/3 more Vitamin A-3 times more Vitamin E -2 times more Omega 3s-3-6 times more Vitamin D

Eating just two of these eggs will give you from 63-126% of the recommended daily intake of vitamin D! All because pastured hens are exposed to direct sunlight, which their bodies convert to Vitamin D and then pass this on to their eggs.

Because of the difference of Practice:

A bird's diet and lifestyle affects its health, flavor, and nutrition, as well as its eggs. Because the chickens consume a more natural, omnivorous diet that includes seeds, worms, insects and green plants, and get a lot of sunshine--because we allow them to live a chicken-like life--their eggs are substantially better. Because pasture-raised chickens have less stress and are naturally healthier than factory raised chickens, they are less susceptible to bird diseases, like Avian Flu. In 2006, the Center for Disease Control said, "When it comes to bird flu, diverse small-scale poultry farming is the solution, not the problem."

Pasture-Raised chickens are allowed to express their chickenness, as Joel Salatin might say. They are not raised in an unnatural environment, without sunlight, on an all-grain diet mismatched to their nature as chickens. Instead we allow them to live as chickens, eating an omnivorous diet more natural to them in a healthier environmentFor farmers, chickens can help us in this system by eating fleas, ticks, grasshoppers, spiders, slugs, mosquito larvae and almost every other insect. They can even eat small mice and snakes. This does mean that pasture-raised chickens are NOT vegetarians, because chickens are not naturally vegetarian. Besides keeping our pest population under control, their very presence on the fields, eating and pooping, provides manure and fertilizer for the soil, promoting organic matter and fertility. Being able to move their pasture enables a farmer to manage and direct the fertility of the land.

"So, here is the deal. We create hellish conditions for
our livestock, then we drug them to keep them numb. Then we drug them again to
wake them from their pharmaceutical stupor. Then we drug them to grow faster.
Then we drug them so their flesh will look healthier. Then we drug them to
withstand the disease epidemics that our overcrowding has created.

Then, of course, we drug ourselves every time we take a bite
of factory-farmed poultry."

The bottom line:Our lives and our food have become increasingly complicated by our enhanced awareness of the long-term consequences and ramifications of their production. Sustainable and healthy alternatives to the industrial factory farm system do exist. But it is up to everyone to make the change in their lives. Know your farmer, know your food.

Why "The Shire Farm"?

“Hobbits have been living and farming in the four Farthings of the Shire for many hundreds of years quite content to ignore and be ignored by the world of the Big Folk. Middle-earth being, after all, full of strange creatures beyond count Hobbits must seem of little importance being neither renowned as great warriors nor counted among the very wise.

In fact, it has been remarked by some that Hobbits' only real passion is for food.

A rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales and the smoking of pipe-weed.

But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good, tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of things that grow. And, yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me, it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”